Chapter 37

The sea was starting to chop. Little waves kept breaking on my face. Annoying. If we had to have chop, then why couldn"t we have clouds?

Or rain. I could definitely use some rain. How I longed to throw back my head, open my mouth, and drink.

What was wrong with me last night to be annoyed by a little rain? I didn"t know when I was well off.

"I"d know if I was the guy, Slate." Noah"s voice was cracked and weary. "I"m not the guy."

"Would you know?" I paddled around to shift myself in a tight circle so I could look into his face without getting ocean in my face. My vision had adjusted to starlight, and there was an answering starlight in his eyes.

"Of course I would know." The words would sound sure, or even indignant, if read from a transcript printed on a page. But the tone was off.

He wasn"t sure. He didn"t know.

Something in me broke.

"Are you sure?" I asked softly. "Would you really?"

Noah"s mouth wobbled but no words came out.

"I have a theory." I spoke more gently than came naturally to me. The way you"d speak to a skittish stray animal. "I"m warning you, though. It sounds pretty science fiction but I haven"t been able to think of a better one."

"I"m not the guy." He didn"t sound certain. At all. "But I"ll listen to your theory."

"Help me find all the holes. We"ll both feel better."

His soft laugh told me what he thought of that.

The Milky Way had appeared. There was a whole huge galaxy up there. It was always up there, but people didn"t know it until a few hundred years ago. Funny how can we miss seeing what"s right in front of our eyes.

"I think," I said slowly, "that maybe you were hired to work on something super secret, super powerful, in the hacking space, and then after you finished the job, whoever you worked for had your memory scrubbed."

He breathed in sharply. "That"s conspiracy theory. CIA stuff."

"The CIA isn"t a theory, it"s a real thing. They plan and carry out secret stuff, and that isn"t conspiracy theory, that"s their job." I took a deep breath of my own. "The NSA is real. The FBI. Bill Mitchell. All the stuff they make movies and TV shows about, all of it"s real, and we mostly know it"s real, but we push that out of our minds and pretend it"s only Hollywood, but..."

Noah shook his head. "No, Slate. No. I"d know if somebody had messed with my memory."

"Yes," I said. "And what you know for sure is that they have. You"ve got those gaps. We both do."

He couldn"t answer that, so he didn"t. Our inflatables kept bobbling us together. Our legs kept knocking against each other.

I didn"t mind. I liked the closeness.

"I"ve noticed something," I said. "Maybe you"ve noticed it too. Haven"t you ever thought you know a little too much for a long-term homeless guy?"

"I... I"m self-taught. And highly motivated."

"And modest too."

We both laughed.

"Seriously, Noah, yes, you"re brilliant, you"ve probably always been brilliant, but people can"t just completely educate themselves. They need systems to work on, expensive computers, teachers or at least books... How do you get much of that when you"re kicked out on the street before you finish high school?"

"I... I don"t know. I just... pick up things quickly?"

"Your ability is probably what brought you to their attention, but you must have been exposed to more education than you remember."

He gawped at me. Shook his head.

"No, stay with me. It"s possible. What if your memory was scrubbed after you did a big job, something super above-top-secret super-duper classified, and they couldn"t take a chance on you ever telling what you knew to anybody ever, so they brainwashed you, replaced those years of work with false memories of being homeless for years."

"They couldn"t... I would never agree to that..."

"I"m not suggesting that anyone asked for your consent before they scrubbed your brain!"

His expression of horror twisted my heart. I shouldn"t go on. What was the point of trying to figure out how we landed in the ocean? What I should be trying to figure out was how to get out of the ocean.

"I would remember," he said. "I wouldn"t let myself forget."

As if he"d have a choice in the matter. As if he could, by willpower, stop a powerful mind-altering drug from altering his mind.

"Well, maybe that"s it," I said gently. "Maybe part of your memory is coming back. You know things you"re not supposed to know. You"re able to do things you never realized you could do. You"ve been using those skills in unauthorized ways to do things like break into the college surveillance system, help yourself to the team"s lounge supplies."

"That was an easy hack. Anyone could have done it."

"If anyone could have done it, they would have done it. The lounge got a lot of publicity, and when the library flooded, not all of that publicity was positive."

Noah shook his head. "No. No. No."

"Yes," I said. "There"s a reason they"re pressuring you this hard. You know something. And even you don"t know you know it."

He put up a hand. More denial, or so I thought at first, but then I heard it too. The sound of a motor.

Somebody was coming for us.